I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And even the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smiled or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.
© John Clare (1793 - 1864)
The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet.
It is a sin I can’t deny
I openly declare that I’m guilty
There is no doubt I’ve committed the crime
Of loving you completely.
Put me in front of the jury
And I’ll stand tall and proud
And with my fingers spread on my soul
I’ll declare my feelings aloud.
The hardest thing to govern is the heart
And mine pays no heed to the law
So it must be punished – must be corrected
So strike me to the floor.
They can burn me with flame, they can cut me with steel
They can hang me by the throat
They can run me through with their sharpest swords
But by heart will still rejoice and gloat.
Because, in the end, my heart will win
And because you’ll never be by my side
My heart has no reason for beating at all –
Would rather be still and keep pride.
So put and end to this fruitless, true love
Shoot a bullet through my soul
And when they tell you why I lie cold and silent
My heart will have achieved its goal.
© Kez WtD forum.
